The proof that I'm thick, too!

Dear Ian

Thanks so much for replying.  It's very nice to hear from you.

Can you tell me when I said, "thick" or where I wrote "thick", please?  I am pretty sure I have never, ever used the word.  It is so very rude!  And. partly because it describes me, exactly.  I failed the 11+ and had five years in a secondary modern school in Ilford, Essex from 1959 to 1964.  I somehow managed to pass six 'O' level GCEs with very ordinary grades.

On the other hand, "foolish" and "misinformed" and "incompetent" are much more accurate and correct adjectives to truthfully describe what all you politicians, over the last sixty-plus years, have been doing to our urban tram and railway networks.  Namely, using our railways for running homes, offices, shops, roads and, grossly extravagant "bus on rails" trams down them.  And, now a Very Light Rail test track for 2 Kms to Cinder Bank roundabout on a railway "of national strategic significance", of all things!!

Your first trick, in the 1950s, was when you all happily dismantled the tram network.  Can you believe it?  Astonishing!

What on earth do you all think you are all doing for so many decades?  

Apart from one brilliant, working, train driver who lives in Rowley Regis and, a member of Railfuture, not one other person, including my family and the media, are at all bothered about this further destruction of a railway "of national strategic significance".  Everyone thinks it is just fine and dandy to break up the UK's last and only mainline, north-south railway between Brum city centre and the Irish Sea (apart from the Hereford to Shrewsbury to Crewe railway).  So we all get stuck in traffic jams on motorways and main roads with a double track, mainline railway alongside or near, ready and waiting to go (almost) but, not a single train or station!

You are in such good company, Ian!

Despite living here in Halesowen since 1976, I never realised we still had one local, very important railway until the mid-90s when Roy Burgess, of Halesowen, told me about the complete waste of a good railway through the very centre of Dudley town.  I remember, very soon after I bought this house in 1976, of how you politicians built yet another house on the Halesowen Railway.  This one was on the southern side of the Halesowen bypass, Manor Way.  By my own silence, I was guilty as everyone else.  I just kept 'mum' and never protested.

Will you, Ian please say something to Patrick and to the MMA/TfWM/WMCA?  It is still not too late to save the railway.  Main works on Metro start in April 2021, according to Jim Cunningham of your council.

Thanks again, for writing, engaging and contacting me.